What I should have done was to take my courage in my hands and have gone on from Taylorville to New York. But the most I was equal to was a fixed determination to accept anything which would take me nearer Broadway, which, even then, was to the player world all that the lamp is to the moth. In the meantime I had settled in two housekeeping rooms in a street that I wouldn't have dared to give to a manager as an address; one of those neighbourhoods where there are always a great many perambulators, and waste paper blowing about. There was never anything for me, in the frame of life called Bohemian, more than a picturesque way of begging the question of poverty. What I looked for in a lodging, was escape from the bedraggled professionalism which went on in what were called studios, by means of a cot bed, an oil stove, and a few yards of art muslin. That I hadn't managed it so successfully as I hoped, was made plain to me a few days after I had moved in, by the discovery of a card tacked on the opposite door, that read, "Leon Griffin, the Varieté." It was the same theatre at which Cecelia Brune was playing the chief attraction in song and dance. In the glimpses I had of Mr. Griffin in the dark hall going in and out, I was aware that he gave much the same impression of unprofitable use that was associated in my mind with the Shamrocks. All this time I kept going through the motions of looking for an engagement. Now and then some shining bubble of opportunity seemed to float toward me, to dissolve in thin air as soon as I put my hand out to it. One of these brought me to Cline and Erskine's waiting room on the day that Cecelia Brune elected to register her complaint against what she considered a slight of her turn at the Varieté. She flounced about more than a little, not to let the rest of us escape the inference that she was not used to being kept waiting. When she had hooked and unhooked her handsome furs for the fourth time, she introduced me to Leon Griffin, who except for the name, I shouldn't have recognized for my hall neighbour. It was like being slapped in the face with my own hard condition to have him crowded on me in that character before the whole roomful. Life seemed so to have beggared him. In broad day he looked the sort of a man who has failed to sustain himself in the man's world, and must reinforce his value with the favour of women. Little touches of effeminacy about his dress failed to take the attention away from its shabbiness. His hair had the traditional thespian curl in spite of being cropped short, to allow of various make-ups, one surmised, and his very blue eyes were in a perpetual state of extenuating the meagreness of his other features. Being ashamed of my shame at meeting him there, I began to be very nice to him. Cecelia, in spite of her magnificent raiment, perhaps on account of it, had been disposed to graciousness. She drew us together with a wave of her hand.